Commission proposal on preventing and combating child sexual abuse: The Commission's engagement with stakeholders

Drawn up in response to the specific request by the LIBE committee of 16 October 2023, this briefing first provides a succinct overview of the role and purpose of stakeholder consultation under the Commission's Better Regulation agenda (Chapter 1), to enhance the evidence base of a legislative proposal. It considers the different types of consultation the Commission carries out at different stages in the process to ensure it consults broadly and comprehensively, as set out in the Better Regulation Guidelines (BRG). Moreover, the briefing outlines the function of the interinstitutional Transparency Register in relation to stakeholder consultation. Chapter 2 analyses in detail how these guidelines were applied in the specific case, starting with the feedback the Commission solicited on the inception impact assessment in December 2020 up until the adoption of the proposal on 11 May 2022. It appears that the Commission has sought feedback and input from a wide range of stakeholders, throughout the process, in compliance with transparency requirements set out in the Better Regulation Guidelines, interinstitutional agreements on better law-making (2016) and the Transparency Register (2021), and EU secondary law, in particular Commission decisions 2014/839/EU and 2014/838/EU regarding the publication of information on meetings held between Members of the Commission and Directors-General of the Commission, respectively, with organisations or self-employed individuals. Chapter 3 provides for a mapping of the stakeholders that gave input to the Commission's consultation activities during the different stages of the preparation of the proposal. It is complemented by two annexes, the first providing a mapping grouped by stakeholder categories, while the second annex covers meetings Commission members (the Commission President, Vice-Presidents and Commissioners), their cabinet members and Directors-General held with third parties in the context of the proposal in question. Finally, based on publicly available sources, Chapter 4 examines the involvement of Thorn and Palantir in the preparation of this proposal. According to publicly available sources, Thorn indeed provided input to the consultations, which appears was not the case for Palantir.